Apple Music’s ‘Eating & Cooking’ Category is the Best Thing Since Spotify

I once found myself on a Sunday morning with 18 batches of cookie dough and 7 batches of cinnamon bun dough to make. Why I had to make that much is another story altogether.

I once found myself on a Thursday morning with loads and loads of food to make. Why I had to make that much is because that particular Thursday was Thanksgiving. 

The common thread between these two days was that in order to facilitate an adequately boppy time in the kitchen, I turned to Apple Music’s ‘Eating & Cooking’ category. Now, I am not opposed to the Spotify cooking playlists; I am just an Apple Music user because I like free things and my family has an Apple Music plan. So this article deals with Apple Music’s offerings, but Spotify has cooking playlists as well. I will point out that Apple Music has an aggregated category where you can find all of the culinary playlists, whereas it doesn’t seem like Spotify has this. Spotify has the Joe Rogan Experience, though.

My favorite thing about the—we’ll call it “E&C” for short—category (besides its sheer existence) is how little thought I have to put into using it. I just pick the playlist that best fits my current cooking circumstance, or the mood I want to create, and the shuffle button does the rest. It’s kind of wild how well the content of each playlist matches its title.

The variety of the category is not only impressive, but also quite helpful, since there are many different circumstances under which one can be cooking. Instead of just a ‘Dinner’ playlist, you can jam to ‘Cooking with Family,’ ‘Cooking with Friends,’ ‘Dinner Party Essentials,’ ‘Sunday Dinner,’ and more. There are playlists for not only different meals, but also different types of cooking (e.g. baking)

The most pleasantly surprising thing about the E&C category is just how spot-on each category is. The song selection truly does match the name of whatever playlist you choose, and the playlists are long enough that you don’t have to worry about the music running out.

Beyond entertaining just you, E&C playlists come up clutch when you are cooking for a crowd and need to create some ~ambiance~. Beyond that, delegating speaker procurement and playlist selection gives your guests something to do while you’re cooking. They can always help with the cooking after the jams have begun, but it’s a great assignment to satisfy the question “what can I do to help?” if you don’t trust their knife skills.

I hope this has convinced all of the Apple Music users reading this that the Eating & Cooking category is the service’s most brilliant of hidden gems—and worth a look-over. For those of you pondering which music streaming service to get: if you like cooking (or eating, I guess), I hope this schpeel has proven relevant for you.